Just to add to this, digital payments in India got popular well before COVID, significantly increasing after the demonetization charade (which imo was a bad decision and total chaos).

The increase due to demonetization cancelled out afterwards. The grown we see now came organically, later

Demonetization induced usage reduced once cash was back in circulation. It was COVID era fear of touching cash and compulsion of lockdowns that really made digital payments hit the stratosphere.

Pre COVID transcations per month stood at 1.5b and now at 8.5B.

COVID might have convinced few people that's all.

Demonetization's effect is not clear since UPI came out just a year before Demonetization took place.

It took off because of young generation and costs nothing as simple as that. They forced businesses and other to embrace it.

Fun fact, i have been using UPI ever since it came out and used to pay for coconut/veggies with it even back in 2017

Curious about your math that equates 7 billion transactions per month to a "few people." That's a relative increase of more than 400%. I think you could argue that we were already on that trajectory, but it sure looks (to me) like Covid accelerated things, which matches my anecdotal experience.

At the end of the day, nothing beats convenience. If the tech and the ecosystem was the same as it is today, it would have found adoption even without demonetization.

After reading this article so much makes sense. I’m currently at the end of my annual trip here seeing family and I have been hearing these things all over the shop.

I didn’t pay much thought to it until now if I am honest. Genius and great to see tech companies do something to actually help people solve real world problems.

This makes so much more sense than illiteracy. The phone app could just have a thumbs up with a number or a thumbs down, after all.

It suggests having a tv-like display would work about as well, and be less noisy / distracting.

What do you think is cheaper, a touch display with a a chip that can render graphics etc or a speaker playing an audio stream from a webservice?

From a hobby point of view (meaning that I purchase these things in very small quantities), then cost of both of these is comparable.

I'm ignoring the "touchscreen" part, though, because that's not necessary. I'm thinking just a basic, small TFT display.

Why would you need a touch screen? An 8-segment display with 2 clicker buttons for looping through history, and a little bit of memory (like in a calculator) would be enough.

I think a display might consume much more power than a speak, these look like they could, if they aren't already, powered with batteries, while a display could also be powered with batteries it wouldn't last nearly as long, not to mention that you can hear this even if you're not looking at it.

100%, Many small street vendors don't have a power connection. They literally have a LED light connected to a rechargeable battery at night. I have seen these sound boxes, they probably come with their own chargeable battery. Display cost would be factor too. But most importantly they can service fast while not taking their eyes off, like when they are cooking (for street food vendors)

> The device just says the amount received out loud and at that point, the customer can leave with the goods. Haven't seen this tech anywhere else.

I’ve seen this in China many years ago on both PoS terminals and smartphones. Guess it shouldn’t be surprising that Paytm brought this to India, given that Alibaba/Ant Financial at one point had a significant stake in it.

I sometimes go weeks without realizing that I have literally zero cash in my wallet.

I was using UPI so much that my credit card usage had dropped to almost nothing. Literally had to force myself to use the credit card more to accumulate some rewards.

Ditto. I close few credit cards because of usage drop. Paying with UPI is easier and at least 10x accepted.

Moreover, within a year or so, UPI will start accepting Credit card linking as well. Things are really moving FAST here.

Credit Card linking with UPI is live for sometime now [0], currently limited to Rupay cards. I have been using my HDFC Rupay CC to pay for Merchant Payments that accept UPI for last month or so.

[0]: https://www.rupay.co.in/rupay-credit-card-on-upi

Any good cards on Rupay? Last time I checked, all the good rewards were on Visa/Mastercard

The good rewards are only possible if the merchants are paying for it through transaction costs. I'd bet on "no" since the national alternatives to Visa/MasterCard usually advertise themselves as "cheaper".

Ironically, it's for Uber (and Ola) - the services that made us move away from cash for taxi and auto in the first place - that I have to carry cash for since the drivers just won't come without cash payments. UPI is better, but they will have the have to fill petrol excuse.

I may be misremembering, but I thought you can fill petrol with UPI too?

>I sometimes go weeks without realizing that I have literally zero cash in my wallet.

That's pretty much my experience in the US. I probably have the same cash in my wallet that I've had for 5 or more years ... if there's any in there .. duno.

The difference is that I have that experience because of credit cards.

I haven't used cash since COVID started and very rarely see anyone else use it either.

I do have enough cash in a side section of my wallet to get me home by taxi from a reasonable distance - just in case.

Is it possible to use UPI as a visitor, or is an Indian bank account required?

UPI support for non-residents has been announced, but not sure of the timeline.

> In my latest trip, I don't believe I paid cash in any shop and I was in a second tier city the whole time, not one of the big metropolitan cities.

If you’re a tourist or business visitor, this isn’t possible. UPI isn’t available to you. Also note that many smaller shops which accept cards and do accept India-issued MasterCard/Visa/Rupay won’t take MC/Visa issued abroad, because their payment providers charge them extra.

Digital payments for business visitors and tourists in India are pretty terrible outside of upscale places.

If you’re an Indian living abroad, for now, you need to keep an Indian phone number active to use UPI (this should change soon). You can use cards though, especially if you have an India-issued card — those have much wider acceptance.

Yes, visitors can make UPI payments now. See recent news:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/invest/in-bound-tra...

This is promising, but it’s not as exciting as one would assume — it’s a very limited rollout, ensuring the use/don’t use UPI decision has to be made quite quickly for people unfamiliar with it, which is most tourists.

> To start with, it will be available to travelers from G-20 countries, at select international airports (Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi).

> Eligible travellers would be issued Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) wallets linked to UPI for making payments at merchant outlets.

> The PPIs shall be issued after physical verification of the passport and visa of the customers at the point of issuance.

Also good luck finding the UPI PPI sale point. And of course it’s extremely limited, to 20 countries.

And the big one

> PPIs can be issued in the form of wallets linked to UPI and can be used for merchant payments (P2M) only.

This is “limited UPI” — you can’t use it for P2P payments or paying your friends and acquaintances. And does UPI Merchant Payments have payment protection / easy dispute resolution yet? If not, tourists would be far better off sticking to cards.

So yeah, good on the RBI for making a start, but this doesn’t help tourists realise even a fraction of UPI’s convenience.

I’m sure one day visitors and regular tourists will be prompted to set up a UPI wallet when they get their visa / eVisa, top up UPI online across the length and breadth of India, and in fact be able to top up their UPI wallets before landing in the country. But there are many bureaucratic barriers before that happens.

I would say, there isn't much of "dispute resolution" in digital payments in India. Sure if someone steals your ATM ad stuff and transfers money, you can go to bank and they will try to get that back but on the whole, it is generally understood once the payment is received, its gone from your end.

We don't have charge backs or fraudulent claims because everything is conscious, with an otp so buyer beware

Totally. UPI has made things awesome for the residents but far far worse for the visitors.

I agree, India in general has pretty bad bureaucracy against tourists, it feels like the government doesn't care at all about attracting them.

But I recently saw that Wise supports transferring money to India via UPI (also more anecdotally - I am living in Singapore and saw that some local banks have this feature as well). I guess this won't be as comfortable as just scanning a QR, but couldn't this technically work for tourists?

I visited India at the start of this year and attempted to pay for my accomodation with Wise (the business didn't have a credit card terminal that took foreign cards). The payment was accepted and marked as sent by Wise, then I went to reception and they said their bank doesn't allow them to receive foreign payments and it would be returned in a few days (which it was). So off to the ATM I went again...

It's surprisingly common to just forget tourists/newcomers to your country exist. I've visited Brazil and I could not activate a SIM card I bought because it expected me to put in a CPF, a local equivalent of a SSN which obviously, as a tourist, I did not have. Many places which offered services to tourists (in English!) still expected a CPF to let me book entrance, for example.

Even living in the EU, oftentimes showing any other document than a citizen ID card issued in the country you're in will cause stress, confusion and nervous phone calls.

This has been standard for years in China.

This role is played by the smart phones in China. The customers pay by scanning the printed QR code, and upon success, the WeChat or Alipay app on the vendor's phone reads out the amount loud.